NGC 6946 (George Simon)

NGC 6946

The last (and only) time I imaged NGC 6946 (the Fireworks Galaxy) was a little more than 7 years ago. When the first clear night in a very long time around these parts coincided with the Full Moon, necessitating that I target an object that had a fighting chance of powering through all that moonlight, I decided that it was a good opportunity to revisit this galaxy.

When I started processing the data I acquired, it came back to me in a flash what a struggle processing was the last time I shot NGC 6946. To begin, there is the task of controlling the dense star field in the midst of which the galaxy is positioned. Happily, during the intervening years, my processing skills have improved to the point that I was able to deal with that issue in fairly short order. But then I came to the task of balancing color in the image. As is well known, our line of sight to the Fireworks Galaxy runs pretty much along the plane of the Milky Way's disk. The resulting galactic extinction produces a significant dimming, and more problematic for imagers, a significant reddening of light from NGC 6946. Which leads to the quandary: Does one process the data in such a way as to preserve the reddened look, or does one manipulate the data so as to give NGC 6946 a look more akin to what we expect to see from a face-on spiral galaxy? The look I wound up producing in my image represents something of a compromise between these two extremes. I am sure it will not be to everyone's taste, but it seemed to be the direction toward which the data was leading me.

On an unrelated note, I continue to be pleasantly surprised by the strength of the H-alpha signal being yielded by my recently modified Nikon D5300. There are orders of magnitude more H-alpha signal in this image of the Fireworks Galaxy than in my previous attempt, shot through a stock Canon 1100D.

Cloudy Nights

	Distinct awarded users	Total awarded images
Image of the day
Top picks
Top pick nominations

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Deep sky
Solar system
Extremely wide field
Star trails
Northern lights
Noctilucent clouds
Landscape

	Image of the day	Top pick	Top pick nominations	Total submitted
Backyard
Traveller
Own remote observatory
Amateur hosting facility
Public amaeteur data
Professional, scientific grade data
Mix of multiple sources
Other
Unknown

Submitted The date and time when you submitted this image for IOTD/TP consideration.	...
Views by Submitters (available since September 19th, 2023) Every image is assigned to 50% of available Submitters. In the event that at least 80% of them don't view the image before its time in the IOTD/TP process expires, it's assigned to the other 50% of Submitters and the process begins anew.
Promotions by Submitters When 3 distinct Submitters promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for Top Pick status. This requirement, in addition to anonymization of images and distribution to only a subset of them, prevents biases and ensures that the best images are selected.
Promotions by Reviewers When 3 distinct Reviewers promote the image, it moves on to the next stage of the process: evaluation for IOTD status.
Early dismissal Staff members have a lot of images to inspect on a daily basis, and they can dismiss images if they believe they don't meet the requirements for IOTD/TP selection. If an image is dismissed 5 times, it's removed from the process. This streamlines the process and ensures that any bias present in promotions could be overruled by other staff members.

Status	Basic success
Started	...
Astrometry.net job	7840459
PixInsight job	n/a
PixInsight queue size	n/a
PixInsight stage	n/a

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

NGC 6946

NGC 6946

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

		...
You have no new notifications.

Image Index:

Contribution Index (beta):

NGC 6946

NGC 6946

Equipment

Acquisition details

Description

Comments

Sky plot

Histogram

In these public groups

Notifications

AstroBin is in READ ONLY mode

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Sorry :-(

Are you really sure?

Warning!

Warning!

Are you sure?

Report abuse

Slideshow settings

IOTD/TP stats (last [x] days)

Distribution of astrophotographers

Distribution of subject types

Distribution of data sources

Sorry

Sorry

Share

Upload new revision

Upload uncompressed source (XISF/FITS/PSD/TIFF)

Delete image and all its revisions?

Delete original image?

Delete all other versions?

Delete all revisions?

IOTD/TP stats

The following people like this image

The following people bookmarked this image

Warning

Flag malfunctioning thumbnails

Contains

Remove yourself as a collaborator

Plate-solving information